Small indie studio Infinite Madaa has revealed to Kotaku that it added “easy” trophies to its PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita game, Little Adventure on the Prairie, to increase sales and help the developer in raising funds for a more ambitious project.

Little Adventure on the Prairie is a simple, short platformer that released this past February and got very little reviews, majority of which panned the game. However, the easy trophies (which include a Platinum) did boost sales and the studio did manage to raise the funds it required. Cross-buy certainly helped.

Infinite Madaa initially set out to make turn-based RPG called Chromia but ran into financial issues that prompted the move. “Everything was going great until we had some money issues,” said developer Salem Al-Ghanim. “Then a friend of mine suggested to release the game on PS4 and Vita and add an easy Platinum to it with a cheap price. This way a lot of people buy it and we would get the funding we need for our next game.”

Kotaku points towards a recent report published by trophy data tracking site, TrueTrophies, which found that games with easy trophies were helping to keep the Vita alive. “The top seven of ten games of 2018 in terms of player count are all games that have been highlighted here and elsewhere as particularly easy and quick trophy lists,” the site wrote.

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